Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Marshalling a Defense

Time to talk about that Marshal kill.

Arabella Meyer's was one of two Marshals ganked by the mighty CODE. alliance last week. Though less expensive at a mere 25.9 billion isk, Arabella's definitely had the worse fit. Or perhaps I ought to say "worst fit", since it would be difficult to imagine any Marshal with a worse one. Not only is it capacitor-tanked, it has gyrostabilizers, which are plainly not the module to pair with a rack of fireworks launchers.

Arabella is the CEO of Damned Fighters. The corp's description suggests a lot of confidence. Maybe the Marshal was some sort of joke, and was intended as a sacrifice when it undocked from Jita 4-4?

The gankers in question were Australian Excellence, brainlet, and a few members of the Tax Collector family. Five Tornadoes were used to bring down the Marshal. Several hours after the gank, Arabella congratulated our Agent--better late than never.

It seems that Arabella didn't lose her 26 billion isk ship on a lark; she regretted its destruction. It's possible that Arabella intended to equip the Marshal with proper weapons after creating a fireworks display in Jita. (As it turned out, her ship didn't need the launchers for that.)

Now Arabella sought to recover her massive loss through space lawyering. Agent Australian gave her a list of some of her Code violations. It wasn't an exhaustive one, obviously, since you could fill a book with the things Arabella did wrong. Afterward, Australian brought up the "blue pass", a service he and some other Agents provide to help facilitate travel in trade hubs.

Rebels like to say our Agents can't make a difference, but on this day they had put the fear of the Code into Arabella. She wasn't willing to undock until she'd heard directly from the Saviour of Highsec.

In fact, Arabella hadn't yet sent me an EVEmail. As soon as her convo with Australian ended, though, she immediately went to work composing one.

Arabella opened by giving credit to the bumper, which was thoughtful. They rarely get their due. Well done, Agent CODE Permit Enforcer.

Despite previously telling Australian that the gank was "fairly run", Arabella insisted that she had been wrongfully ganked and was in full compliance with the Code. If that was the position she wanted to take, she probably should've purchased a mining permit. It was probably also a mistake to link her lossmail, since the ship she lost didn't exactly scream Code compliance.

As she approached the conclusion of her EVEmail, Arabella hinted at foul play on the part of the gankers. Once again she appeared to be backpedaling; a few paragraphs earlier she'd conceded that the death was legitimate under CCP's rules.

At this point it was clear that Arabella deserved to be ganked. The possibility of her receiving 26 billion in reimbursement isk was very remote indeed. But then, as always, the carebear took further action--just to erase all doubt:

Arabella was caught on Discord confessing to the filing of frivolous petitions against our Agents--with the intention of getting them banned! Doesn't she know that it's bad for CCP's revenues when people get banned? I thought carebears were all about player retention.

What a Goofus. At least the GMs will be treated to viewing a juicy killmail.

This is a front put on by the miner. Her vapid and insincere dialogue is an attempt to place herself at the same level as her superiors, (note how she later goes over their heads and attempts to speak with The Saviour directly, using 'I' and 'me' in excess).

Despite having a poor understanding of the game mechanics, the miner goes on to report our noble Agents to CCP, in the hope that they will permanently ban them from EVE.

The longer I play this game the more I despise weasely slugs like that arabellashitter. Cowardly, two-faced, lying, yellow bastards like that need to be hunted until they learn that acting like a carebear bitch in EVE has consequences.

And he needs to be banned for abuse of the petition system. All carebears that file a petition about ganking need a 10 year ban so they can think about how poorly they reacted to pvp in a pvp game. After a decade they can be reassessed to see if they are mature enough to play EVE correctly.

I'll never understand why carebear shitters try to play a PVP game. How can there be that many willfully ignorant idiots playing the wrong game? How can so many carebear shitters think they belong in EVE in 2018?

15 years of carebear assumptions about highsec (and EVE in general) being proven wrong by the community, AND CCP, but the shitters just keep coming. How do we convince these retards thet they don't belong here?

I feel that EVE could be a truly great PVP sandbox, or a mediocre mining sim, but not both. CCP has fallen short of the "butterfly effect" they so wanted you to think EvE was, but nothing you do matters in a game where all your target needs to do is flee to highsec to avoid pvp. If the devs were true EVE fans there would be no omnipotent CONCORD. Even the origin story for CONCORD is bullshit, warring states don't cooperate like that.

Yea, too bad hilmar let the carebears in, EVE could have been truly epic. A true pvp sandbox mmorpg community can police itself, and anyone who needs their hand held for more than a week should probably not play in that environment.

Ah yes I was wondering if I'd get a response to my in-game mail to you. This is probably the closest we will get. Yes i was bitching in one of my discords that day. Of course you can imagine a loss like that was salt in the wound and needed a bit of addressing through blowing off steam. That being said, I'm surprised the Judge sent you those screenshots.

Regardless, I have to ask because it isn't stated in the code directly: Was it the fact that I was shooting fireworks that violated the code? Or the fact that i was simply flying a high value ship? Curious to know your thoughts about that.

Well said. Well i have respect for the CODE. now and there followers. Although respect is not appreciation. I am glad for the experience so that I can now be "enlightened" enough to not let it happen again.